Thirteen Billion

Google announced on Wednesday that it will invest €13 billion ($15.1 billion) in AI infrastructure in Finland, along with a deal to buy nuclear power from the Loviisa plant for the next two decades. It is Google's biggest single investment in the EU to date.[1]

The investment, scheduled for 2027 and 2028, will fund data centers, electrical grid improvements, and clean energy and battery projects for Google's chatbot, search, and map services. The company claims it will pump €3.6 billion into Finland's GDP and create 37,000 jobs, 7,000 of them permanent.

The nuclear deal is with Fortum, the state-owned energy company that operates the Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant. Without Google's commitment, Fortum said the plant, which supplies about 10% of Finland's electricity, would not have been able to continue operations past 2030. Now it will run until the end of its operating licenses in 2050. Fortum shares jumped 15.5% on the news, making the company the biggest winner on European stock exchanges for the day.

"We call this BYOP," said Google President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat. "Bring your own power." It is Google's first nuclear energy deal outside the United States.

Finland offers two advantages for data centers: cold Arctic temperatures reduce the energy needed to cool servers, and a population of only 6 million means less resistance to the kind of large-scale infrastructure projects that face growing pushback in the US. Google repurposed a former paper mill in the coastal city of Hamina in 2009 and has been expanding ever since. Microsoft and TikTok parent ByteDance have also set up data centers in the country.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo called the investment "historical" and said it makes Finland "a front-runner in digitalization and AI." He downplayed concerns that Google's project could drive up energy prices, saying Google is "committed to ensuring that electricity remains affordable for Finnish households."

Not everyone is convinced. Finland's grid operator Fingrid forecasts a 40% jump in energy consumption from the data center boom. And Finland's Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO) has issued explicit warnings that foreign-owned data centers pose potential security risks. SUPO is concerned that municipalities may be weighing economic benefits more heavily than security risks, particularly when owners are linked to authoritarian states like Russia or China. The intelligence service notes that authoritarian states could try to use Finland to circumvent technology export sanctions, such as those on advanced chips banned from export to China.[2]

The deal is part of a broader pattern. Alphabet, Google's parent company, has increased its global investment to around $200 billion this year as it races to compete in AI. Data centers are the physical infrastructure of the AI industry. They are also its bottleneck. Without power, the servers do not run. Without cooling, they overheat. Without land and political permission, they do not get built.

Google is solving all three problems at once by going to Finland: cold climate, cheap nuclear power, and a government eager for investment. The €13 billion is not just money. It is a bet that the next decade of AI computation will happen in the Arctic, powered by reactors that were supposed to shut down.